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Congratulations! You’ve just purchased your airline tickets and are committed to a vacation in the truly remarkable country of Iceland. What can you expect? IT IS COLD. Iceland is called Iceland for a reason. If it were Sunland or Warmistan you could be forgiven for being upset at the absence of heat you will undoubtedly…

Go to the hotel’s website. It was designed in the late 1990s but it should have room rate information somewhere. The room rate information will be in Icelandic Króna (ISK). Is 20,000 ISK expensive? Who knows? You’ll have to leave the web page and go to Google Finance. Use the currency converter to find out….

In case you were unaware, French highways become parking lots during the summer. Especially in the south of France. Especially on Saturdays when people are departing from or arriving to the vacation houses they’ve rented. I learned that fact this summer, having spent countless hours in various traffic jams. Just sitting. Sitting, sitting, sitting and…

Price Chopper’s Fruit Whirls is their store-brand answer to Fruit Loops. They look and taste the same, sure, and they cost much less. But the educational value of the back panel is questionable. “Languages from around the world” indeed, if by “world” you mean, well, Europe and her colonies. Where’s the Bantu?

Montréal is a great city, filled with tons of naked women dancing. Usually naked women dancing are pushed off into some corner of a city – such as Boston’s Combat Zone, or New York’s Times Square before Giuliani Disneyfied the area. But not Montréal. There, you can step out of a high-end clothing store, walk…

In 2005 my wife dragged me, kicking and screaming, to China. I did not want to go because I had a picture in my head that I was quite comfortable with and didn’t feel like challenging it. But, since my wife is almost invariably right it turned out to be one of the most amazing trips of my life. I still talk about the asparagus. Best asparagus ever. No doubt it was farmed in melamine-tainted soil with carcinogenic fertilizers – but it was truly delicious.

DINK 50 MOTOR SCOOTER
You can get around town quite easily with a bicycle because town is as small as Angelina Jolie is creepy. But, should you wish to get around town even faster or simply desire to come across as a wee bit more macho you can ride around town on your Dink.

For the purposes of this test we outfitted two cars. One car with the Graco TurboBooster car seat, the other with plastic restraints. To ensure the best possible uniformity in testing we used a pair of identical twins separated from their mother by eye-opening legal precedent.

Air travel is rarely a fun or relaxing experience – and when kids are involved it’s like poking your eyes out with a fork while jackbooted thugs step on your groin and Hitler pours acid on your herb garden. Here are some helpful tips to keep you sane this holiday season.

I’d always considered my wife’s home village to be “rural” because there aren’t many people in it, the police station is only open on Tuesday, and I can walk the length of it in under six minutes. By virtue of having been there several times and having attended town gatherings and New Year’s Eve parties I can say that I’ve likely met or crossed paths with every single person there who isn’t holed up in their domicile.

The village has a brand new gathering spot courtesy of the mayor. What was once the ruins of the old cinema were leveled to make way for an outdoor stage, dance area, and a ring of picnic tables. The tables are sheltered by an awning that anyone over 5’6″ runs the risk of smashing their…